S Group Insights: Water purifiers, televisions, ACs lead TV advertising with 34% share

exchange4media.com and Strategy Group, the Analytical Arm of TAM Media Research, jointly bring you a weekly column 'S-Group Insights' on Advertising Trends of different Product Categories. This column will be published every Tuesday and aims to aid advertisers, and media agencies understand changes in Media Consumption patterns leading to Scientific Advertising Investments. In the current column, we take a look at the consumer durables industry.

India is expected to become the fifth largest consumer durables market in the World by 2025. The sector is expected to double at 14.7 per cent CAGR to USD 12.5 billion in FY15 from USD 6.3 billion in FY10. Even with the robust growth, the advertising of durables on TV as well as print has not seen similar a trend. After substantial growth in year 2010, the category has witnessed a drop in media presence (TV and Print) in the last couple of years.

Durables is a vast category which consists of different products like Water Purifiers, Televisions, Air conditioners, Power backup systems, Kitchen products etc.

The major contributor to the growth in 2010 was Water purifiers and Power Backup systems. Looking at the overall advertising, Water purifiers, Televisions and air conditioners are the key product groups in this category, with combined advertising share of around 34 per cent on TV.

Among the top three product groups, seasonality differs a lot. Water purifiers ad volumes increase around rainy season, while that of Air-conditioners increase around summer season. But it’s the television sector that is expected to grow in coming festive season.

There is considerable difference in the media plans of top players within TV category. Samsung has clear focus on South regional/ English content, while Sony prefers news channels for its campaign. Samsung relies on English advertising on TV with 97 per cent share of English language. Panasonic advertises purely in English while Sony has least preference for English with 73 per cent of share.

Samsung had the most widespread campaign in 2014, which reached out to 90 per cent of the universe at the frequency of 22. It took the advertiser 85 channels to build these deliveries. Sony reached to 81 per cent of the universe with the frequency of 11, using 63 channels (2014). Both top advertisers have higher deliveries on older age group (25+) and higher SECs. (2014). The skew towards Metros is heavy while LC1 markets are underexposed. South market is clear priority for Samsung. Exposure in terms of reach as well as frequency is higher.

No such prioritization is present on Print. However, there is clear distinction in terms of choice of publication houses for Samsung and Sony. (CC)

For Samsung, Times of India was the most heavily used publication, while Focus of Sony was on both Times of India and Dainik Bhaskar. Even though the preferred publication house of top players varies, the category is ruled by Times of India and Dainik Bhaskar with around 12 per cent share each. As long as the language is concerned, the focus shifts to Hindi and other regional languages. Here, Panasonic has least preference for English while contribution of Hindi advertising increases to 50 per cent.

The companies like Samsung have presence in multiple categories. Their focus of advertising has also been changing over the years.

On TV media, focus on Refrigerators has been increasing over the last three years, while Televisions category continues to dominate with major share across years. The dominance of Televisions category is more evident on Print media. Major distinction can be observed for Durables range, as Samsung prefers to advertise their durable range on Print rather than on TV.